Albee Center, W. A. Vance
Ardmore, Abraham Mundon—
And Elmer listened with them, suddenly terrified.
What did the bishop mean by a “rather larger town”? Some horrible hole with twelve hundred people?
Then he startled and glowed, and his fellow priests nodded to him in congratulation, as the bishop read out “Rudd Center, Elmer Gantry.”
For there were forty-one hundred people in Rudd Center; it was noted for good works and a large pop factory; and he was on his way to greatness, to inspiring the world and becoming a bishop.
CHAPTER XXII
I
a year he spent in Rudd Center, three years in Vulcan, and two years in Sparta. As there were 4,100 people in Rudd Center, 47,000 in Vulcan, and 129,000 in Sparta, it may be seen that the Reverend Elmer Gantry was climbing swiftly in Christian influence and character.
In Rudd Center he passed his Mizpah final examinations and received his Bachelor of Divinity degree from the seminary; in Rudd Center he discovered the art of joining, which was later to enable him to meet the more enterprising and solid men of affairs—oculists and editors and manufacturers of bathtubs—and enlist their practical genius in his crusades for spirituality.